On Or Close

Tomorrow LIRR customers can record videotaped comments at two LIRR stations this week about the MTA's proposed fare changes.  All comments will be transcribed and made part of the permanent record for review by the MTA Board.  Unfortunately for them, Ronkonkoma Station was among the two chosen as a location…unfortunately for them, because that is MY train station.  I am less concerned about the fare hike, and my time will be focused on the decades of neglect in upgrading a system that is reminiscent of the 1950’s…and they are held to the standards of that day.  There is a three-minute time limit for each individual's videotaped comments.  Three minutes is not nearly enough.

 

I don’t even know where to begin, so I will start at the beginning.  Growing up in Valley Stream at my Grandparents house was as close to rural as I will ever get.  The 50’x100’ plots were not yet laid out and there was still plenty of free land to roam.  You even heard the rooster’s crow as dawn approached.  Yes, Valley Stream…THAT Valley Stream.  There was a house behind us, but you could barely tell where our property ended and theirs began.  I became close friends with the kid who lived there, as he was only a year older than me.  His Dad, knowing mine was not around, took me under his wing at times…like one of his own.   In the winter he would let his son and I take out his O-scale trains and set them up all along his basement floor.  I am surprised we did not electrocute ourselves, these were vintage 1940’s trains…and safety was not a priority when they were building them.  In the summer, we would head up to Connecticut and the Branford Trolley Museum.  It was a vintage railroad where you could step back in time and ride the rails.  What a great place to go as a kid.  How did my friend’s Dad become such a train aficionado?  He was an LIRR Conductor.

 

It must have been an exciting time to be part of the LIRR.  With each passing year the technology would grow.  As families moved from Brooklyn to Long Island, the railroad expanded to meet the needs of the commuter.  My friend’s Dad had a huge portfolio of pictures showing the evolution of the railroad.  I would spend hours going through each one.  At this time, the big project was elevating the south shore line.  Valley Stream station had already been raised, but the project was scheduled to go all the way to Babylon.  It was 1975 and my friend’s Dad was invited to the ribbon cutting ceremony at the Merrick Station.  All the LIRR bigwigs were there, and also the Mayor of the town.  We all stood on the platform awaiting the ceremonial first train to arrive.  My friend and I went to the very end of the station to be the first to spot it.  As we saw the lights appear down the far end of the track, I ran to tell my friend’s Dad, “The train is coming, the train is coming.”  The following day in the paper, the event was written up in an article in Newsday.  The Mayor proudly describes the day and how the new station was vital to the growing town.  As the ceremony was beginning, the Mayor thought wouldn’t it be nice if someone could make a big deal about the arriving train.  He said as if on queue, a young redheaded freckled kid ran through the crowd shouting, “The train is coming, the train is coming.”  This is the last time I recall any major upgrade to the track line by the LIRR.

 

When the LIRR finished the south shore line project in 1980, one would think they would move on to bigger and better.  They never did.  In 1987 the Main Line was electrified all the way out to Ronkonkoma, but no massive track project was ever to take place again.  They promised a third track on the main line through Nassau.  They promised a SECOND track on the main line through Suffolk.  Promises, promises.  Long Island’s population continued to grow, but the LIRR failed to have any foresight to be able to handle the added traffic.  Or perhaps they just didn’t care.  I think it is a little of both.  I came across an LIRR timetable from 1928 for the Port Washington branch on eBay.  I was surprised to find the same stations listed since I did not know the history of that branch.  What I found out next though, stunned me.  The timetable from station to station was EXACTLY the same.  The same amount of time it took you from Port Washington to Woodside in 1928, is the same time today.  You would think in 80 plus years they might have shaved a minute or two off.  Nope!

 

The Port Washington line is the one line that does not go through Jamaica Station.  You would think that if any line could speed things up it would be that one, since it did not have to perform the “Jamaica Crawl”.  For those of you not familiar, it is the speed at which a train has to go through the Jamaica switches.  The reason?  This nest of track stupidity was designed in 1911…and never changed.  Even if your train does not stop at Jamaica, you still have to go through it.  No express tracks were ever built to speed trains past.  You might have heard the switching system was upgraded a year or so back.  What you might not have heard was that a lightning strike brought down the whole system only a few months later.  Now this was the lever and pulley system that was finally upgraded after 100 years, but the new computer system is still operating the same antiquated switches themselves.  They frequently break down and in cold weather have an issue with freezing.  One cold day a few years back I found out why.  As I was travelling SLOWLY on the Jamaica Crawl, I stared out the window into the abyss.  Much like seeing a gremlin on the wing, I thought my eyes were playing tricks.  Down below on the track, there were flames.  I was ready to flag down a conductor to warm him of the perils that lie ahead.  That was when I noticed ALL the tracks had flames on them. OH MY GOD, this is the deicing system?  Good thing the LIRR doesn’t run an airline!  It was in an article during the big snowstorm in 2009 that the LIRR said their service came to a halt because the system to keep the switches from freezing kept failing.  Of course it did, the wind from the storm must have kept blowing out the flames!  They failed to put THAT in the article.  No one would have believed it.

 

This leads me to my BIGGEST pet peeve about the LIRR.  “We are sorry for the delay, we can’t control the weather.”  Yes, I agree with that.  But what you could have controlled was the years of neglect and not upgrading the system with technologies that CAN handle the weather.  Rain, thunderstorms and snow are nothing new to the Northeast.  I understand when we have a hurricane, a nor’easter, a blizzard…even the tornado that touched down in Queens.  But riders are faced with delays when there are simple weather changes, and the LIRR is quick to use it as an excuse.  It rains.  There are thunderstorms in the summer.  There is snow and cold in the winter.  You don’t need a Farmer’s Almanac to predict these things.

 

All it would take is an organization that cares about its customers and the want to provide a quality service.  Even the Post Office boasts “And neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night, nor the winds of change, nor a nation challenged, will stay us from the swift completion of our appointed rounds.”

 

The LIRR can’t even handle “On or Close”